By Daisy Ruiz, Staff writer
While the country chose a new president Nov. 8, students at Indian Trail High School & Academy participated in their own political process, including a school presidential debate and election with the help of Marla Day’s AP Government and Politics class.
Katie Hillstrom, a General Studies senior, represented the Democratic Party and Michael Hertel, a Med-Sci Academy senior, represented the Republican Party. English teacher Katie Phillips moderated and students handled the hot topics of this year’s election. They argued about illegal immigration, ISIS, healthcare and more. Both had eight minutes to get their points across and one minute for rebuttal.
Both classes seemed to be ready to go the day of the debate. The event drew greater interest among the student body because it’s a presidential election year, unlike in years past when the two candidates limited participation mostly to just the government classes. But this year, both candidates passed out buttons and hung posters all over the school to get the students to go out and vote.
On Nov. 8, students had the chance to cast their ballots in the school’s caf- eteria. Students had to go and registered themselves in order to vote. After that, they were lead to a voting booth. Indian Trail had the option to vote for either Hilstrom or Hertel for the school-wide election, but they also got a chance to vote for national candidates.
The races included former Democratic U.S Senator Russ Feingold and incumbent Republican U.S.Senator
Ron Johnson. It also included incumbent U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, against challenging Democrat Ryan Solen.
Not only did they have that choice, but students also had the option to vote for presidential candidates. Their choices were Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Republican candidate Donald Trump, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
So even though many students couldn’t go vote the day of the election due to their age, many students did go out of their way and vote in Indian Trail’s mock election. Students had a chance to discover how it felt to go out to cast their ballot and learned about how important it is to vote if you are al- lowed to.
In the end, Hillstrom beat Hertel, 65.4 percent to 34.6 percent. In the real U.S. presidential race, even though Clinton lost to Trump, here at Indian Trail, she won 55.5 percent to Trump’s 27.5 percent